Delta has a long-term strategy to boost its profitability by moving away from set fares and toward individualized pricing using AI. The pilot program, which uses AI for 3% of fares, has so far been “amazingly favorable,” the airline said. Privacy advocates fear this will lead to price-gouging, with one consumer advocate comparing the tactic to “hacking our brains.”
How does a AI know whether you’re rich or not?
Welcome to surveillance capitalism buddy
They buy aggregated data from every other company and organisation in existance. That includes your purchase history and behaviour in great detail. Of course they will also have the data of your relatives and friends, which they will take in to account.
That’s a field in data science / marketing that’s been active forever… assume that companies at large have a rating of their prospects & customers & ex-customers alike which includes a notion of wealth. Either derived from consumption habits or acquired through data brokers or both usually.
But what if I’m searching flights through a search tool like Kayak? I’m not logged in for that, and possibly using a VPN.
Depends of a lot of factors. Best case that’s enough. VPN isn’t generally doing much beside obfuscating network of origin and that’s not accounting for leakages. There’s stuff of the nightmares with pixels and cookies cross feeding data from a session to another… And tools like kayak might themselves have incentives to profile you as well. I don’t know that one particularly but in the end if you’re not giving money you’re likely giving data to someone…
Your employer likely uses TheWorkNumber, that place lets anyone have all your data. Previous employers, W2s, dependents, SSN, salaries, bonuses, benefits, address, marriage status. Its given freely to corporations because fuck you this is America and this what we voted for.
Good thing I live in Europe then
There are no borders on the internet ;)
Credit check.